COMSIGUA, C.A. Was established in May 1996, and the Plant Supply Contract was signed in June 1996. The plant was constructed by Kobe Steel Ltd. On a full turnkey basis. It has produced 1,570,000 tons and sold 1,350,000 tons as of the end of April 2000.
COMSIGUA, C.A. Was established in May 1996, and the Plant Supply Contract was signed in June 1996. The plant was constructed by Kobe Steel Ltd. On a full turnkey basis. It has produced 1,570,000 tons and sold 1,350,000 tons as of the end of April 2000.
COMSIGUA, C.A. Was established in May 1996, and the Plant Supply Contract was signed in June 1996. The plant was constructed by Kobe Steel Ltd. On a full turnkey basis. It has produced 1,570,000 tons and sold 1,350,000 tons as of the end of April 2000.
COMSIGUA, Matanzas, Venezuela Introduction COMSIGUA, C.A. was established in May 1996, and the Plant Supply Contract was signed in June 1996 between COM- SIGUA and Kobe Steel Ltd. (Japan), to build a merchant MEGAMOD (one million ton/year production) hot briquet- ted iron (HBI) plant. Construction of the plant was completed in July 1998 (25 months after signing the contract), and the commissioning work started in August 1998. Commercial pro- duction of HBI started in the middle of Sep- tember and the first commercial shipment of HBI was made on October 22, 1998. In October 1999, after 13 months of operation, an annual shutdown was per- formed in order to carry out repairs and cleaning work. After that, the plant has been running stably and has produced 1,570,000 tons and sold 1,350,000 tons as of the end of April 2000. The plant was constructed by Kobe Steel Ltd. on a full turnkey basis. The con- struction period lasted from June 20, 1996 to July 23, 1998 (25 months), which is one of the shortest times on record in building such type of plant. The purposes of the establishment of COMSIGUA are as follows: 1) Developing a project in Venezuela which has a strong competitive advantage in HBI business: Availability and cost-competi- tiveness of input materials (iron oxide, natural gas, electric power, and water). Geographical advantages (close to the United States and access to ocean shipping). 2) Proactive investment to take advan- tage of growing market demand for the virgin iron unit. 3) Contributing to the industrial development by adding substantial values to raw materials, and provid- ing new employment opportunities. 4) Securing foreign currency inflow into Venezuela by exporting non- petrochemical products. Outline of the Plant Oxide Material The oxide material to feed the shaft furnace is constituted basically of 80% pellets pro- duced by Ferrominera Pellet Plant, a pel- letizing plant adjacent to COMSIGUA, and 20% lump ore, extracted from the San Plant Operation and Product Quality in COMSIGUA HBI Plant Plant Operation and Product Quality in COMSIGUA HBI Plant Pellet Lump Ore T Fe 68.00 65.20 SiO 2 1.20 0.60 Al 2 O 3 0.65 0.92 CaO 0.35 0.01 MgO 0.20 - Sulfur 0.002 0.012 Phosphorus 0.050 0.070 L.O.I. - 5.00 Table I Pellet and lump ore analysis (%) Isidro iron mines of Ferrominera Orinoco, located approximately 120 km southwest of Puerto Ordaz. The typical analysis is shown in Table I. Plant Features The process is the conventional MIDREX
Process. However, many technological
innovations were introduced to the plant based on lots of operational experience from existing and commercially operating MIDREX Plants. The oxide material is transported and loaded into three bins, one for lump ore and the other two for pellets. The capacity is 1,800 tons each, and the lump bin is equipped with a special ladder to prevent fines generation due to falling height. The basic blend- ing ratio of oxide is 20% lump ore and 80% pellet. Constant feeders equipped underneath these bi ns control the blending ratio. Then the mixture is fed to the shaft furnace through oxide screens, where oversi zed oxi de (+ 45 mm) and oxide fines (- 6 mm) are removed. The shaft furnace is standard Midrex design with several innovations: 1) Adoption of thin wall refractory at the reduction zone of the shaft furnace reduces the pressure drop of the burden and also increases furnace (reduction zone) volume. 2) Adoption of a double bustle port for reducing gas injection allows the gas to better penetrate into the center of the burden in the reduction zone and thus to improve metallization of the burden in the center of shaft furnace. 3) Modification of the shape of the flow-aid insert equalizes burden descend- ing speed between the center and wall side of the shaft furnace reduction zone. The reformer is a conventional MIDREX Reformer system equipped with 480 reformer tubes (10-inch inner diameter), where the rib-ring type catalyst is used to reduce the pressure drop across the tubes. As for the heat recovery system, there are three types of feed gas bundles; i.e., feed gas dryer bundle, cold preheater bundle, and hot feed gas bundle. The feed gas dryer bundle preheats feed gas to only 150C in order to evaporate the mist contained in the feed gas so that the dust contained in feed gas does not stick to the inside of the 8 DIRECT FROM MIDREX 2ND QUARTER 2000 Figure 2 Shipping port product handling flow sheet Figure 1 COMSIGUA Wagons Product Silo Product Yard Product Screen Hopper Ship Loader Product Sampling Point Ship Unit Low production High production Oxide blending ratio Pellets/ 80/20 80/20 Lumps % Hourly production t/h approx. 120 approx. 150 Process gas flow Nm 3 /h 135,000 165,000 Process gas CO 2 % 19.5 20.0 20.0 21.0 Reformer box temp. C 1,130 1,130 Reformed gas temp. C 930 930 Reformed gas CH 4 % 0.9 1.1 Reformed gas CO 2 % 2.7 2.8 Bustle gas temp. C 800 830 850 Bustle CH 4 % 3.5 3.5 4.0 Reduction zone P Bar 0.80 0.85 0.85 0.95 Table II Typical plant operations parameters tubes. Thereafter, feed gas is fed to the cold preheater bundle and then to ZnO catalyst to eliminate H 2 S from the feed gas. Because the lump ore used has a high sulfur release to the top gas and higher H 2 S con- centration in the natural gas, the mixed feed gas inhibits reforming reactions by H 2 S poisoning of reforming catalyst. Feed gas exiting the ZnO catalyst is fed to the hot preheater bundle to increase gas tem- perature and enhance the productivity of the reformer. The highly metallized DRI is dis- charged from the shaft furnace and fed hot to four briquetting machines, where the DRI is compacted and briquetted. Then, the HBI is dropped into the quench tanks, where it is cooled. Since the COMSIGUA Plant does not have any on-site loading facilities, the HBI produced has to be transported to a loading site at the shipping port by means of rail. However, to avoid HBI fines gen- eration, all HBI transported to the Item Specification Actual Total Fe 91.2% min. 92 93% Metallic Fe 84.7% min. 85 87% Carbon 1.2% min. 1.3 1.8% Sulfur 0.03% max. 0.002 0.006% Phosphorus 0.09% max. 0.06 0.075% Total gangue 6.0% max 3.5 4.5% Drop test results 76 82% (+38.1 mm) Drop test results 1.1 1.9% (-4 mm) Product fines (-1/4")* 2.0% max 0.3 0.6% Apparent density 5.0 g/cm 3 min. 5.0 5.3 g/cm 3 * After shipping screen Table III Product specifications 120,000 100,000 80,000 60,000 40,000 20,000 0 Figure 3 Monthly production (tons) O c t
9 8 M o n t h l y
A c c u m u l a t e d
N o v
9 8 D e c
9 8 J a n
9 9 F e b
9 9 M a r
9 9 A p r
9 9 M a y
9 9 J u n
9 9 J u l
9 9 A u g
9 9 S e p t
9 9 O c t
9 9 N o v
9 9 D e c
9 9 J a n
0 0 F e b
0 0 M a r
0 0 A p r
0 0 1,500,000 2,000,000 1,000,000 500,000 0 100.00 80.0 60.0 40.0 20.0 Figure 4 Operational availability and plant availability O c t
9 8 P e r c e n t N o v
9 8 D e c
9 8 J a n
9 9 F e b
9 9 M a r
9 9 A p r
9 9 M a y
9 9 J u n
9 9 J u l
9 9 A u g
9 9 S e p t
9 9 O c t
9 9 N o v
9 9 D e c
9 9 J a n
0 0 F e b
0 0 M a r
0 0 A p r
0 0 Operational Availability Plant Availability DIRECT FROM MIDREX 2ND QUARTER 2000 9 shipping port, located 13 km east of the plant, is first screened through the prod- uct screens at COMSIGUAs plant site. The facilities at the shipping port are rather simple (see Figure 2). The trans- ferred HBI is discharged and stored in a product yard. Based on the shipping plan, the HBI is loaded onto the ships through a shipping screen in the shipping port to remove HBI fines. In addition, a special soft loading device is attached to the ship loader to avoid fines generation while load- ing HBI onto the vessels. Product samples are taken just after screening in order to analyze the quality of the product. Current Plant Operation Condition As the market situation began to recover in April 1999, the production rate was brought to full capacity. Monthly production condition is shown in Figure 3, and plant availability is shown in Figure 4, respectively. Since the annual shutdown was per- formed in October/November 1999, the rated hourly production has been raised and maintained at 145150 t/h at the shaft furnace. Plant availability and opera- tional availability have also been main- tained at higher levels. Product Quality Product specifications and actual charac- teristics for COMSIGUA HBI are sum- marized in Table III. As shown, the quality of the product is excellent and meets the HBI chemical and physical specifications. In order to attain such high quality, several actions are being taken: 1) Close monitoring of HBI chemical quality by frequent analysis. Chemical analysis (such as metallic Fe, total Fe, metallization, carbon, sulfur) are analyzed every two hours in order to confirm the quality and to take immediate action. 2) Frequent analysis of physical charac- teristics, drop tests, fines measurements, and density determination are conducted to maintain the physical specifications. 3) Close observation of process para- meters (temperature inside shaft furnace, process gas analysis, etc.). 4) Close observation of feeding mater- ial to shaft furnace, especially size distribu- tion of pellets and lump ore. The drop test is the fraction of greater than 38 mm and less than 4 mm obtained after dropping product samples from a height of 10 meters five times consecu- tively. Measurement of drop test is very important because these data can be used to estimate the fines generation of prod- uct during handling and transportation. Sales Amount of Product Figure 5 shows the monthly sales amount. From the end of October 1998 up to the end of April 2000, the total sales amount was 1,350,000 tons. Most of the product is exported to the USA, Mexico, France, Spain, Korea, and so on, for electric arc furnace, basic oxygen fur- nace, or blast furnace use. Summary After the commissioning and start-up of the COMSIGUA HBI plant in September 1998, the plant has been operating steadily and under good control of production, product quality, and other factors. COMSIGUA had already produced 1,000,000 tons by September 1999 and 1,500,000 tons by April 2000. Now that the market is favorable, COMSIGUA has been maintaining high monthly produc- tion, more than 90,000 tons per month. Because of the good quality of the product, many customers are becoming increasingly interested in buying COMSIGUAs product. Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to Kobe Steel Ltd. and Midrex Direct Reduction Corporation for their excellent engineering work and assistance since the beginning of the COMSIGUA Project. During the commis- sioning and start-up periods, we faced many difficulties due to the lack of required skills by our operators. Nevertheless, after overcoming such problems, COMSIGUA exceeded 100,000 tons in October 1998 (120% of its nominal capacity.) We at COMSIGUA will always appre- ciate the cooperation received from all the people who were in any way in touch with our project. This article was adapted from a paper origi- nally presented at the Iron & Steel Societys 57th Electric Furnace Conference held in Pittsburgh, PA, Nov. 14-16, 1999. 10 DIRECT FROM MIDREX 2ND QUARTER 2000 150,000 100,000 50,000 0 Figure 5 Sales amount of COMSIGUA HBI Product (tons) O c t